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To the editor:
The Oct. 8 editorial cartoon in The South Bend Tribune depicting Michael Moore as a hypocrite for bad-mouthing capitalism in one panel and then in the next panel enjoying a pile of money made from his new movie could not have been “Moore” wrong.
Moore’s movie “Capitalism: A Love Story” is entirely about the corruption of capitalism and the warping our free enterprise system by Big Money. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin had it right when he said the banking industry “owns” Washington. Durbin could have gone further and told the complete truth that the rich and the powerful now “own America.”
If anything Moore is a classic capitalist in the purest sense of the term. He had an idea for a documentary. He took a risk on its production. His movie will either succeed or fail in the marketplace. That is the way our economic system is supposed to work.
The point of Moore’s film is nothing new. The wickedly funny rant by CEO Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) in the 1976 movie “Network” is now no longer funny. Jenson bellowed to Howard Beale (Peter Finch) that he – Beale – is “an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples’ when in fact there are no nations anymore – just one multinational ‘dominion of dollars.’” Jensen screams out an absurdity, now truth: “There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.”
Conservatives who self-righteously call themselves “patriots,” no doubt, cheered The Tribune’s editorial cartoon totally unaware that they had just made themselves out to be the real hypocrites. They wail against big government taking away their liberties, but blind themselves to the raging elephant in the room trampling our economic system, known as Big Money.
Wayne Falda
Edwardsburg
As usual, a liberal writes defending Michael Moore and his so called “documentaries.” His films are nothing of the sort, and always trashes the very privileges that he enjoys in this country. Does Falda offer any constructive-or instructive lines in his letter? No, of course not. It wasn’t his intent to offer solutions, that is someone else’s job. Namely big government. Richard Durbin may well ciritcize big business, but in examining his campaign contributors, it seems to this writer at least, that he is one of the biggest offenders. Big business is far from the problem. Big government is the larger problem, and its treatment of big business. Business is at once the villian, benefactor, and beneficiary of members of the government just like Durbin, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and in truth, most of our government representatives, both national and state. Mr. Moore, who so dislikes this country, as is witnessed by his theatrical contributions, and they truly are theater, is quite content to take full advantage of the very system that he wishes we would put aside and follow him into totalitarianism.